888sport Deliver Knockout Blow on Social Media

Saturday saw the biggest British boxing fight in the post-war era, the rematch between Carl Froch and George Groves, with the IBF and WBA champion retaining his title with a devastating knockout in the 8th round. This was reflected on Twitter where the fight dominated the top trends and was driven by brands and fans, including our own clients, 888sport.

888sport came out on top of the social media charts, according to an article posted today by iGaming Business. The article

“888sport’s re-tweeting of Vine content and humorous Twitter posts enabled it to pull away from other operators in terms of awareness and audience.

In total, 888Sport garnered 273 boxing-related mentions thanks to its posts. The contest, which pulled in a live audience of 80,000 and put boxing at the top of the sporting headlines, was won by Carl Froch in the eighth round.”

Brands are up against it on social media, particularly those marketing to a sports fans. It’s no secret that 3-5 years ago social media was innovative, it was breakthrough and those brands that invested in their social strategy, creating a story telling pitch and not a sales pitch would now be reaping the rewards. Today social media is a jungle and for most brands and agencies, the only way to cut through is through targeted advertising spend. Facebook knows this and is the reason they have reduced their organic reach to a lowly 2%.

However, we have found that, 1) by positioning your tone of voice to be ‘one of the fans’ , 2) engaging with influencers by curating their content and 3) by welcoming contributions; we can travel much farther than any promoted post. Here are two examples we posted that cut through delivering a knockout blow in the form of reach and brand awareness… excuse the pun.

You can see below the influence that having social media experts manage your activity can have on share of voice (the % conversation to related terms that competitive brands are sharing). The analysis done through Social Monitor, shows the difference in share of voice between April and May (we activated on May 1st), social media mentions per sport and boxing mentions between the two months.

There have been around 34,000 mentions as part of share of voice in May, compared to 6000 in April. Football has been the dominating driving force of conversation on @888sport, which is unsurprising with the end of the Premier League season, the Champions League Final, and the build up to the World Cup. 888sport has also had the highest share of voice compared to its competitors in regards to boxing and fighting, with 29%.

888sport are just one of our clients who are seeing higher levels of reach and awareness than ever before. With a very busy period of sport approaching, it’s imperative that if you too are a brand that wants to market to a targeted sports fan audience, you will need a strategy that cuts through the jungle noise also; without resorting to a lazy advertising lead approach.

To find out more on what we did with 888sport for the 2014 World Cup click here and here.